[ubuntu-za] Alternate CD

[Morgan Collett]

On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 07:56, Bill Cairns <cairnsww at gmail.com> wrote:
> I see that the note for alternate CDs says:
>
> The alternate install CD allows you to perform certain specialist
> installations of Ubuntu. It provides for the following situations:
>
> setting up automated deployments;
> upgrading from older installations without network access;
> LVM and/or RAID partitioning;
> installs on systems with less than about 256MB of RAM (although note that
> low-memory systems may not be able to run a full desktop environment
> reasonably).
>
> Has anyone used it for the upgrading option? It sounds a pretty good way to
> go.

The fundamental difference between the LiveCD and the Alternate CD is
that the LiveCD has a preinstalled image which it writes to your hard
drive, whereas the Alternate CD contains the .deb packages in an
uninstalled state.

Upgrading with the Alternate CD therefore gives you a head start on
upgrading purely over the Internet, as you don't need to download
those packages. However, anything you have installed over and above
the set of packages on the CD (the default install, more or less) will
have to be upgraded over the Internet.

The other possibility is the official DVD. Ironically available from
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/hardy/release/ (replace hardy with
intrepid after the release), contains all of main and restricted -
meaning every package that is officially supported by Canonical. It
doesn't contain packages from universe or multiverse. This DVD can be
booted up like the LiveCD, but due to the extra capacity it also has
the deb packages for upgrading (or installing).

Various people also make unofficial DVDs which contain all of universe
and multiverse as well on several DVDs. In a completely offline
situation, or a low bandwidth situation, those let you install
anything in the Ubuntu archive.

Regards
Morgan